Tag Archives: the band perry

Ugly Christmas sweaters, favorite movies, future collaborations and Christmas lists were topics of conversation when The Band Perry — fresh off of a month on tour in Europe — spent about 30 minutes answering questions from fans on Twitter last week.

Deana Carter is thinking it might be about time to move home. The country singer and songwriter enjoyed her first big success more than 15 years ago with “Did I Shave My Legs for This?” while she still lived in Nashville. But 13 years ago, her career pulled her to Los Angeles to work on movie soundtracks and do voice-overs.

Carter released new album “Southern Way of Life” last week and spent much time in Nashville while working on it. She said it felt good to be home.

From recording their own gospel albums to including God in awards-show speeches and thanking Him in album credits, country singers have almost never shied away from sharing their faith with their fans.

“Country Faith,” a new book compiled by local CMA Award-winning journalist Deborah Evans Price, allows more than 50 of the genre’s biggest stars to get even more personal with their testimonials.

Paisley used the opportunity to share James 2:17 which reads, “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” The words inspired “Those Crazy Christians” from his “Wheelhouse” album.

Jackson cited 1 Corinthians 13:13, which says, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Jackson previously used the verse in his song “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning).”

Lambert chose Proverbs 12:4, “A wife of noble character is her husband’s crown” following her first year of marriage to Blake Shelton.

Miranda Lambert

Jimmy Wayne, formerly a homeless orphan, used James 1:27. He says he lives his life by the verse, which reads, “Religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

“For me it was a no brainer, pretty simple,” says Wayne, who had a three-week No. 1 hit with “Do You Believe Me Now.”

In 2010, Wayne walked from Nashville to Phoenix to raise awareness of at-risk teens aging out of the foster-care system. He started a campaign called Project Meet Me Halfway to keep his message alive and he saw the book as another way spread the word.

“Anything my name is attached to, it’s always going back to Project Meet Me Halfway,” he says. “In my mind, being a star isn’t about being a famous. It’s about being a light to shine for other people.”

“Country Faith” is available online and in stores now.

Wayne will play a benefit for the 30th anniversary of CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) for children at 6 p.m. Sunday at Nashville First Church of the Nazarene, 510 Woodland St. Tickets are $15 for adults and $7 for children at www.casa-nashville.org.

Click the photo above for a photo gallery from the making of the 'CMT Crossroads.' Here, Patrick Stump of the Fall Out Boy and Kimberly Perry of The Band Perry talk over their parts as they rehearse a song on Oct. 1, 2013, in Nashville. (Photo: Larry McCormack/The Tennessean)

Stump, lead singer for rock group Fall Out Boy, was baffled — even with the help of a teleprompter — the first time his group and Perry’s sibling trio attempted the soaring ballad in rehearsal. While Kimberly Perry nailed the lyrics to her trio’s song, Stump didn’t even attempt the lines assigned to him and asked to go through the song with just Kimberly Perry and a guitar.

“There were a lot of rhythms that just came in sideways in my head,” Stump said of “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely.” “By the end of it, that will probably end up being my favorite song because that was the one we spent the most time on.”

The unexpected collaboration between The Band Perry and Fall Out Boy and the initial confoundedness with “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely” is par for the course for CMT’s long-running cross-genre duet series, “Crossroads.”

While members of both bands struggled at times during rehearsals, they managed to learn each other’s songs enough to confidently perform them together during the next day’s live taping of “Crossroads.”

“It’s interesting because there’s all this angst going (into the taping) about who is going to do what,” said John Hamlin, executive producer on “Crossroads” and senior vice president of music events and talent at CMT. “When ultimately the musicians step onto the stage for the first rehearsal, they instantly speak a language that the rest of us don’t speak and they work it out between themselves. They are always very gracious and very generous and very inclusive.”

Brandy Clark plays a song before going on stage at the Grand Ole Opry on Friday, Oct. 25, 2013, in Nashville, Tenn. (photo: John Partipilo/The Tennessean)

Poor Brandy Clark should know this won’t work. After all, she’s been told time and again.

Country music decision-makers and label bosses have explained it all: They love her songs — which trade on dark humor, layered intelligence, real-life moral conundrums and grown-up problems — but she’s a square peg trying to fit into a country music terrain filled with round holes.

“People at the labels would never just say, ‘No,’” Clark says, recalling her fruitless efforts to get a major label recording contract. “They’d say, ‘I love this, can I get a copy for my wife?’ But it would always end with, ‘I’m a big fan, but I don’t know what we could do with it.’”

Of course they didn’t know what to do with it. Poor Brandy Clark just doesn’t fit. She’s a female in what is now a male-dominated format, and an independent artist in a genre dominated by large record labels.

She’s openly gay, in a genre where any homosexual radio successes that might have taken place have been closeted.

“I would just hope that the music will speak for itself, and will transcend all of that,” she says. “Maybe I’m naive in thinking that.”

Weird thing is, poor Brandy Clark enters this CMA Awards week as one of the top stories in country music. Fifteen years after she moved to Nashville from Washington state to attend Belmont University, the naive thing is serving her well.

The rap duo is up for six awards, including artist, new artist and single of the year for "Thrift Shop." The "Same Love" performers will battle heavyweights Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift, Rihanna and Bruno Mars for artist of the year at the Nov. 24 fan-voted awards show in Los Angeles. Miley Cyrus and Imagine Dragons will perform.

Kelly Clarkson and will.i.am announced the nominees Thursday at the B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in New York.

Swift and Timberlake have five nominations each, while Robin Thicke, Rihanna and Florida Georgia Line have four each. Mars and Imagine Dragons are up for three awards each.

Nominees for single of the year — a new award — include Thicke's ubiquitous "Blurred Lines" and Florida Georgia Line and Nelly's "Cruise."

Swift, Rihanna and Pink are nominated for favorite female artist-pop/rock. Timberlake, Thicke and Mars are up for favorite male artist-pop/rock.

Swift is also nominated for favorite female artist – country and favorite album for both pop/rock and country.

Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boys and Kimberly Perry of The Band Perry talk over their parts as they rehearse a song for “CMT Crossroads” on Tuesday at Rocketown. (Photo: Larry McCormack/The Tennessean)

The Band Perry and Fall Out Boy joined musical forces this week to tape CMT’s newest edition of “CMT Crossroads.” The show pairs artists of different genres and documents the journey as they learn and then perform each other’s hits in front of a live audience.

The Band Perry and Fall Out Boy had two rehearsals leading into this afternoon’s show at Rocketown. Lead singer of Fall Out Boy Patrick Stump took turns swapping lyrics with The Band Perry’s Kimberly Perry on songs including the country trio’s hits “Done” and “If I Die Young” and on Fall Out Boy favorites including “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark” and “Alone Together.”

Tuesday night the bands sat down for a joint interview with the network in which they talked about everything from songwriting and relationships to radio formats and hiatuses, something Kimberly Perry said isn’t in the cards for her sibling trio.

“CMT Crossroads: Fall Out Boy and The Band Perry” will premiere 9 p.m. Friday, Nov. 29, on the network and will include the live performance and excerpts from the joint interview session.

The Band Perry recently celebrated its latest No. 1 song “Done,” and the trio’s new single “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely” is now playing on country radio. Fall Out Boy recently reunited after a five-year break and released its comeback album “Save Rock and Roll” earlier this year.

The blond spitfire lead singer in The Band Perry said “yes” on Monday night when her boyfriend of a year-and-a-half proposed at Perry’s parent’s house in Greeneville, Tenn.

Perry knew that Arencibia was coming to Tennessee that night, but she thought she was picking him up at the airport. What transpired is the proposal Perry has dreamed of for years.

Perry’s family moved to Greeneville onto a 15-acre spread grounded by a large oak tree when she was a teenager. Perry said that from the first time she saw the tree, she hoped that “if I get proposed to in this life, I hope it happens underneath this tree.”

Perry thought her family was meeting to go to dinner, but when they called her to come outside, Arencibia was standing under the oak tree.